VOCAL WILDS
The Art of Embodied Improvisation
Founded by Tatianah Thunberg and Irene Soléa Antonellis, Vocal Wilds is a Michigan based collective of artists providing a sanctuary for improvisational singing, embodied voicework, and communal creativity. We collaborate with a vibrant constellation of improv artists, singers, musicians, dancers, ritualists, and creative facilitators who share a devotion to embodied voice and communal artistry. Our circles are shaped by the gifts of these collaborators who bring their own lineage of wisdom and artistry. Each offering is co-created with the singers who join us, the artists who stand beside us, and the more-than-human world that inspires us. Learn more about our collective below.
Our Collective
About Irene Soléa Antonellis
Irene Soléa Antonellis (she/her) is a music therapist, psychotherapist, life coach, vocalist, and recording artist with a lifelong career in the healing and expressive arts. She holds an M.A. in Counseling Psychology and Music Therapy from Lesley University and has led contemplative music concerts, workshops and retreats throughout the U.S. and in South America, Europe, and Asia. Nine years ago, she planted roots in Ann Arbor, MI, where she now lives with her husband and two daughters.
Irene draws musical inspiration from sacred sounds around the world and Latin folk music traditions. With a musical inheritance that includes Peruvian folk and huayno (her grandfather was Peruvian composer Manuel León), Irene blends musical traditions, the old and the new, and is known for her directness, equanimity, warmth, and humor.
Early in her career, she found a home in the vibrant a cappella communities of the Northeast, where she directed university and semi-professional vocal ensembles, toured with a cappella sextet 6Appeal, and quietly earned a few Best of Collegiate A Cappella (BOCA) nods while serving as adjunct faculty at Suffolk University. Her first solo LP, Beloved, was featured in Yoga Journal, Yoga Chicago, and on stages and studios from the Kripalu Center (MA) and Yoga Tree (CA) to the Prague Spirit Festival.
Rooted in her bicultural heritage and a deep belief in the voice as medicine, Irene is devoted to embodied practices that connect us to beauty, wholeness, and aliveness. In her private practice, one of her specialties includes working with musicians and creatives to heal trauma, build and maintain deep emotional health and groundedness, experience expressive flow, and navigate the unique challenges of liberated, nontraditional career paths. Her approach blends talk therapy with somatic modalities including Music Therapy, Brainspotting, and Parts Work, offering a dynamic and deeply grounded path to healing and self-discovery.
Learn more about her healing arts practice here:
About TatiAnah Thunberg:
TatiAnah Thunberg, LMSW (she/hers) is somatic psychotherapist, vocalist, expressive and improvisational artist, and a seasoned experiential facilitator with more than thirty years of experience guiding transformative groups. Her work centers the voice as a path to belonging—an embodied, relational practice rooted in presence, creativity, and communal care.
Today, TatiAnah brings a trauma-informed, neurodivergent-aware lens, an attuned facilitation style, and a joyfully improvisational spirit to every space she leads—inviting participants to soften protective patterns, take creative risks, and experience the profound belonging that emerges when voices rise together.
She grew up singing in choirs, where early experiences of harmony and shared focus sparked a lifelong devotion to collective song. Performance never called to her as deeply as singing together—and in the 1990s, ceremonial community singing revealed her true home. There, she discovered song not as a showcase, but as communion, presence, and devotion.
Over the past fifteen years, through her creative and healing arts practices, she has woven together experiential education, community singing, Kirtan chanting, ecstatic dance, authentic movement, contact improvisation, Hatha yoga, partner yoga, Thai yoga massage, and the science of nervous system regulation and somatic attachment. These lineages have shaped her understanding of the voice as a practice of relational intelligence.
Collaboration sits at the heart of TatiAnah’s artistry. She has co-created a wide web of song kin through creative community building and long-term creative partnerships:
+Full Moon Kirtan Michigan: response chanter with Trevor Eller’s ensemble since 2011
+Harmonic Voice Meditation: vocal improvisation practice co-founded with Don Allen and Jeremy Fulwiler in 2013, flourishing for seven years.
+Supper & Sing Circle: a monthly vocal improv jam co-founded with Mary Fithian in 2018, still evolving today.
+Song ceremonies & workshops with Julie Kouyaté since 2022.
+Lush Up & Fall Into Harmony: co-producing and co-leading community singing & vocal improv retreats, with Lyndsey Scott, Beth Patterson, Kath Weider, and Carol Bardenstein starting in 2023.
+Temple retreats and weave & sing workshops with Asia Sikkila since 2024.
+The Vocal Lab: co-founded with Kath Weider in 2024, a weekly vocal improvisation immersion and biannual retreat that grew into the songha, a dedicated and ever-evolving ensemble of improvisational singers.
These collaborations, practices, and decades of embodied work converged in 2025 when TatiAnah, Dory Mead and Irene Soléa Antonellis co-led a retreat that birthed the name Vocal Wilds and sparked the formation of the Vocal Wilds Collective.
TatiAnah has deepened her practice through group and individual coaching with gifted voice teachers. She continues to study voice, vocal improvisation and percussion with:
• Dory Mead: Mead Performing Arts — since 2023
• Kath Weider: Studio for Vocal Alchemy — since 2023
• Dede Alder: frame drumming & singing — since 2024
• Aime Debrone: Neuro Athletics — since 2025
• She is enrolled in Rhiannon’s All the Way In program (2026), under the direction of Cara Trezise.
More about her healing arts and expressive arts practices can be found here:
Our Collaborators
